


Uncharted Caves

by JayMerged



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First time posting here, I apologize in advance, Infection, Lots of Angst, Multiple Endings, let's see how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:26:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22925620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayMerged/pseuds/JayMerged
Summary: There are two paths here, both of which I'll explore in their respective chapters later on, but I want to know which one is the one you'd like to see first, so let me know which one is your choice:~KILL~ or ~LEAVE~
Relationships: Cornifer/Iselda (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Uncharted Caves

A small knight marches with a steady step through the dark twisted tunnels of Deepnest, the bright lumafly light from their lamp pendant illuminates their way.

They are unfamiliar with this place, but they had already found out why the Lords had locked the entrance to it so long ago, strange critters crawl out of the ground at almost every step they take and lunge at them out of nowhere, their nail was already soaked in the sickly bright orange of the Infection just a few chambers in and at this point it's leaving a trail of orange dots over the gravel and stone debris as the liquid drips off of the blade's pale ore with each step forward.

Considering their past experiences exploring new zones of Hallownest, they should have had walked into the cartographer already, that tune he usually hums as he charts out the zone always gives him away, but it seems that's not the case here, and the possible reasons for such a sound to be absent just spread out like root branches infinitely, from simply bad timing, having missed him, or even a sudden conclusion to his activities, or his life altogether. Anything could happen to a bug down in this somber nest of beasts, and nobody would ever find out.

The Knight lunges forward and carves through a weaver with their nail and keeps marching forward, unfazed. Something smooth and thin crinkles under their foot and they look down, their two hollow sockets perceiving the object they just stepped on.

It's a piece of paper, and a closer look reveals that it's covered in aimless black ink scribbles in some sort of incomprehensible shorthand or frantic writing that failed to keep its message anywhere near understandable for anyone but the author.

The Knight looks back up and holds their pendant forward to let the light reach further down the almost pitch-black tunnel, another scribbled piece of paper lays a few paces away from the first, just as unintelligible as the first one it seems.

They walk forward a few more steps and see more papers littering the gravel ground, shaping a quite familiar arrangement for the Knight, the cartographer is nearby, but something is off this time. Usually, the papers that the cartographer leaves as a seemingly accidental path to him are discarded drafts of the current map he would be working on, and from which the Knight has concluded that he's a perfectionist of some sort, as most of the discarded drafts looked perfectly functional but for a slightly line on a straight path or a turn to the right drawn half an inch too early or too late from the actual proportions of the rest of the map. So to suddenly have those swapped to not only scribbles but unintelligible ones should be a clear sign alert.

The Knight follows the paper trail with their stoic posture unchanged, looking down at each paper in case any of them are at all readable, not bothering to even pick them up.

They notice that the scribbled lines start losing their vaguely letter-like motif and slowly turn into irregular shapes that twist and extend through the entirety of the pages, then turn from irregular to downright frantic once again, the ink of the lines merging together until they're impossible to tell apart and turn into black splotches with straight lines jagging out of them like spikes.

It was not until The Knight was standing in front of the entrance to the smaller tunnel the trail led them to, that they can hear a familiar tune echoing out of it over the sound of their steps and the skittering around of what lurks in the dark. The entrance is just tall enough for The Knight to not have their horns getting in the way so they march forward into the tunnel.

The cartographer has always had a knack at finding safe hiding spots out here in Hallownest to work on his maps at his own calm pace, and at first glance this would seem to be no different case, however, that assumption would be incorrect.

The way that his quill audibly scrapes the parchment as he writes is almost as loud as his hauntingly slow and paused humming. As The Knight walks into the natural dome-like pocket of air the tunnel leads to, their lamp shines and what it reveals confirms that this is not one of their normal encounters with the cartographer.

The bug was sitting hunched forward in an uncomfortable fetal position, his knees pressed against his chest and slowly rocking his entire body from left to right in irregular, twitching movements. An excessive amount of parchments surround him, most of them covered with scribbles and splotches of black ink and he is erratically scrawling something on another parchment, his back turned on the knight.

He does not react in any way to The Knight's further approach to face him, focused almost obsessively over whatever he was trying to engrave into the parchment with how much force he was applying to the quill. The Knight looks up to meet his eyes and they see a vacant stare on them as he follows with his sight the twitchy, erratic patterns he is drawing.

It is a bit concealed with how dim it is in comparison to their lumafly's light, but The Knight manages to notice a faint, almost ghostly, orange glimmer radiating behind the cartographer's big, round glasses. An evident signature of The Infection's late stages.

The Knight takes another step forward to get a better look at whatever the cartographer was working on with that parchment he is frantically scribbling on, and, from what they can see with how dimly lit this cavern is and the cartographer's claw frantically sliding around and getting on the way, the piece of parchment seemed to have initially been a (excessively sloppy in comparison to his other maps) rendition of the first few chambers and tunnels of Deepnest that soon devolved into senseless lines that twist, scramble and merge together with no clear pattern. 

Snap. 

Faint and gentle, but they notice it, and they look at the cartographer's claw, where the lower half of his quill stays in a tight, sharp clasp as it scrawls away, the pale feathers and the rest of the upper half lies on the paper, snapped off just now.

The Knight looks back up to the cartographer's face just to see him inexpressively staring at them, not even looking at the parchment he is still working on anymore.

"Friend..." his voice is nothing but a painful whisper, his trunk twisted into a snarl, yet it sounds like at least a small part of himself still remains in there, at least for now, of course, The Knight's experience with the miner at Crystal Peak's entrance has made them aware that the cartographer's chances are far from promising.

"Amazing... wouldn't you think?" He continues as if it was just any other encounter between the two of them "To venture... into such horridly dark depths... and encountering the brightest... light a bug could ever witness with his... eyes... so..." he breaks into a fit of dry coughing, his torso violently shaking back and forth, bright orange fluid stains the parchment at the edge. "So bright..." he then trails off, staring at The Knight without a single thought or emotion visible on his usually jolly and reflectful expression.

The Knight needs a map of this zone, and they have no clean parchment of their own to just copy what the cartographer managed to trace there... they are also certain that the cartographer's wife is never going to have one either.

So they reach out for the parchment with one hand, grasping their sharp nail by the handle with the other, just in case the situation deteriorates even further in the next couple of seconds.

The Knight's light tug at the parchment is immediatly received with the cartographer's resistance. "F-Friend?" He sounds confused and concerned "What are you... doing?" The Knight sees that even as he speaks and even as he grasps the parchment hard with his other claw, he does not stop scrawling at any moment with what's left of his quill.

The Knight tugs for the map again. "I-I... I haven't finished yet! Stop!" He cries out, desperately pleading them with his teary eyes. "Please! Wait! I'm so close to figuring it out! I... I can feel it..." he sounds so genuinely terrified of losing this map.

The cartographer's grip on the parchment is stern and desperately refuses to budge, like his life depends on his ability to keep it in his posession, but even under the effects of The Infection, it is evident he's hasn't been a strong bug for a long time. So, despite them being less than half the cartographer's size, the sturdy, inexpressive Knight easily pries the scribbled parchment from his desperate claws the moment they actually apply force to their pull on the map, but not without pulling and dragging the poor cartographer across the rocky ground for a couple of seconds as he kept desperately pleading them to let go of his map.

The Knight then gives the scribbled map a last look before rolling it shut and storing it under their cloak. They turn back to the cartographer with their nail on hand in case taking his map was enough to make him snap into violence, but all they see is him laying miserably on his side, seeing him struggle and fail to get himself off the ground shows that The Infection has already taken an evident toll on his strength.

"Please! I need it!" He pleads to The Knight, knocking over the half empty flask of ink he had laying beside him and pouring its dark contents onto the stone and gravel of the cavern. He wheezes as he tries to get back up once again, but slips and falls back onto his side, grunting at the light brunt he takes from it. This seems to be his disturbed mind's breaking point, because he then proceeds to lightly sob and curl up into a ball, hugging his knees close to his chest.

"I was... so close... I was sure I could... find a way to the Light..." he sobs defeatedly. "It is so bright and beautiful... I-I..." he breaks into another fit, drips of bright orange fluid run down his cheek and to the ground, he wheezes for air before breaking into yet another one, his throat makes painful strained noises as more infection fluid sprays out of his mouth. He soon enough regains what little composure he is still able to hold just to say between quiet sobs "I just... wanted Iselda to come with me so we could... see it... together...". He then breaks into quiet sobs of despair and brief fits of coughing as he just lies there on the ground.

They inspect the cartographer's other papers that were surrounding him and find a peculiar one: A wide, heart-shaped splotch of ink with two almost perfectly shaped circles painted onto it with bright orange fluid as paint.

The Knight looks back at the sobbing cartographer and becomes aware of the choices laid before them by fate in this cavern, for their nail could be drawn now and bring this damned soul to his undoing here and now, or they could walk out and leave this soon to be husk to his own devices.

The cavern's acoustics allows the cartographer's quiet sobs to drown out any other sound to the point that, as far as anyone inside this natural dome of stone is concerned, the entire rest of the world could just vanish at any second and no difference could be ever noticed in here.

**Author's Note:**

> There are two paths here, both of which I'll explore in their respective chapters later on, but I want to know which one is the one you'd like to see first, so let me know which one is your choice:
> 
> ~KILL~ or ~LEAVE~


End file.
